Our conventional physics teaches us that there are  four fundamental forces at work in the universe  

the strong force the weak force the  electromagnetic force and the gravitational  

force they work over different ranges and have  different strengths and are the reason behind  

most of the universe's function as we know it  from playing basketball to launching a rocket into  

space to sticking a magnet on your refrigerator  all the forces that all of us experience every day  

can be whittled down to this critical quartet yet  there are a lot of explanations missing we still  

have no idea what dark energy is and how it's  expanding the universe or what exactly dark matter  

is made of among many other mysteries of deep  space that our knowledge of physics is perhaps  

too limited to understand welcome to Factnomenal  and today let's look at the discovery of the  

fifth force of nature that we're quite sure  exists but don't comprehend entirely yet

in one of our recent videos about data collected  by the Hubble telescope we talked about how  

there's something missing out there a source of  energy or perhaps a force that's messing with  

the Hubble constant the rate at which the  universe expands however there's a problem  

when we try to understand this phenomenon we don't  possess the right knowledge to analyze this power  

our physics is incomplete we may have to change  a lot of things about what we know as universal  

physics to understand what we don't yet know and  that can be scary for a lot of people a new study  

that's grounded in the research of dark matter is  proposing something similar and that can be both  

daunting and equally fascinating the researchers  from the university of nottingham found that their  

new study could lead toward a first potential  new physics explanation that's still based on  

dark matter in contrast to previous studies this  recent study suggests that hypothetical particles  

called symmetrons are generating invisible walls  in space that hold galaxies in their orbits but  

what the heck are symmetrons in the first  place for years scientists have been trying  

to understand dark matter and dark energy from the  perspective of our current inventory of particles  

and forces in nature but they simply aren't  able to explain major cosmological phenomena  

such as why the universe is expanding at an ever  faster rate or what holds galaxy's shapes together  

interestingly both of these phenomena are somewhat  related one of the candidates for explanation  

is the so-called "symmetron field," which is said  to pervade space much like the Higgs field the  

Higgs field is a theoretical field of energy that  exists in every region of the universe the field  

is accompanied by a fundamental particle known as  the Higgs boson aka the god particle which is used  

by the field to continuously interact with other  particles such as the electron while the Higgs  

boson provides mass to every particle that enters  its field symmetrons are supposed to provide shape  

to everything that interacts with it such as  galaxies however it's too early to call for that  

as researchers believe that there's still a 50 50  chance that they could be wrong however it is a  

step towards understanding that mysterious isle of  astrophysics that we don't understand whatsoever  

in order to prove that there are indeed invisible  walls in space the burden that symmetrons exist  

must be fulfilled first space instruments like  the James Webb telescope and others could be  

beneficial in this possible endeavor as they study  how the universe was formed in its early stages  

and to tackle this challenge we must come up  with a solution for the satellite disk problem

the lambda cold dark matter model is currently  considered the standard model for understanding  

the positions of galaxies around each other but it  has its issues the lambda model presupposes that  

small galaxies should be scattered in messy orbits  around larger galaxies but the majority of the  

small galaxies orbiting their large counterparts  are arrayed in thin flat plains interestingly  

these disks or planes are strikingly similar to  the rings of Saturn which kind of makes it look  

like there's an invisible wall in space that sets  these galaxies into an arranged order astronomers  

often refer to these walls as satellites which can  be located in synced up orbits all over our galaxy  

and they've observed them in neighboring galaxies  as well over the past few years experts have  

proposed several explanations that could solve  the satellite disk problem however as with the  

Higgs particle whose mass wasn't known until  the existence of the particle was confirmed  

the physical properties of symmetrons cannot  be accurately predicted unlike the Higgs boson  

whose existence was proved by experiments  performed here on earth symmetrons are a  

little bit trickier in that regard nobody can say  what the mass of a symmetron is nor how strongly  

they interact with normal matter and that's  what makes them a kind of schrodinger's cat  

it's hard to prove if they exist or not and  there's no way to open the box so what can we do  

maybe understanding the other  four forces may hold a clue  

in no particular order as we mentioned earlier the  four forces of nature that govern the observable  

universe are gravity electromagnetism the weak  nuclear force and the strong nuclear force  

gravity is obviously the easiest to understand  and explain ask newton he got hit on the head  

by an apple and that actually helped okay maybe  that story isn't entirely true but we do know that  

an apple was involved gravity is the force that  causes any two things that have mass such as atoms  

people planets stars etc to draw towards each  other the bigger the mass the stronger the pole  

easy peasy but that doesn't exactly work in my  case though i'm quite buff and it doesn't seem to  

magically draw women to me anyway on to the next  one the next one is also not that tough to explain  

to be honest it's quite self-explanatory by its  name electromagnetism that's just electricity and  

magnetism mixed together well actually there's a  bit more to it than that the electromagnetic force  

explains how things that are electrically charged  positively or negatively interact with each  

other one of the major understandings is that a  magnetic charge can create an electric charge and  

vice versa those interactions are responsible for  electric power generation which is kind of a big  

deal electromagnetism and how it pushes and pulls  objects is responsible for the energy in things  

like batteries and magnets but it also includes  light which is just waves of electromagnetic  

radiation the last two the strong and weak forces  are theoretically stronger than gravity but they  

work at the micro level only that is at very short  distances that means in the tiny spaces between  

atoms and the even smaller spaces where quantum  physics starts making everything really weird  

that's why they're called the strong and weak  nuclear forces in fact the strong nuclear force  

is the strongest of the four known forces and is  basically the glue that binds everything together  

it's responsible for keeping protons and neutrons  stable and then allows them to join and become  

atomic nuclei the weak force the opposite of the  strong force on the other hand is responsible for  

radioactive decay it's what controls how things  on a nuclear level fall apart and also before  

we forget to mention it the weak nuclear force is  also responsible for fusion and keeps our lovely  

sun all bright and warm-like not really that  weak in its function is it however while we did  

explain what these four forces are or do we didn't  talk about what makes them tick why they act the  

way they do and what's the reason behind their  existence does one body with mass just magically  

start moving towards another massive thing nope  if that was the case i wouldn't be having such  

a hard time finding a date but in all seriousness  it's made possible by things called force carrier  

particles force carriers are the particles that  carry information between things and tell them how  

to behave think of force carriers as little pocket  constitutions for each of the four fundamental  

forces they lay out not only all the rules for  how to behave but also force the forces to act  

by those rules you can call them one force to  force them all or the forcest force to ever force

the force carriers for gravity are  hypothetical things called gravitons  

for electromagnetism they're photons for the  weak nuclear force the carriers are called w  

and z particles and for the strong nuclear force  gluons these force carriers are all classified as  

kinds of bosons and now we're close to the  possibility of throwing symmetrons into the  

mix as well if the hypothesis proffered by the  team from the university of nottingham bears fruit  

if symmetrons exist that means a force that's  carried by them must exist as well in 2015  

a group of physicists at the Hungarian academy of  sciences saw what the University of California at  

Irvine physics department called puzzling  anomalies in their experimental data the  

Hungarians weren't sure what the anomalies were  but they pointed to the existence of a new kind of  

light particle however that's where the lead  stopped as the Hungarians were unable to calculate  

if this particle had a mass or not as is the case  with photons later a professor of physics at the  

University of California at Irvine won Jonathan  Fang christened this particle the "X Boson" at  

least for the time being it's believed that the  force carried by the x boson is very similar  

to electromagnetism however while the normal  electric force acts on electrons and protons  

this newfound boson interacts only with electrons  and neutrons and at an extremely limited range  

frustratingly that's all we know about the x boson  as the candidate for the carrier particle of this  

particular brand of the speculated fifth force on  the other hand a new study from the University of  

Nottingham presents a fresher explanation  of symmetrons that constitute the build up  

of space walls between and around galaxies  this could possibly solve this long-standing  

mystery once and for all however further details  regarding this study have yet to be made public  

so we'll have to wait a little longer for the  really juicy bits but for now the future's  

looking brighter who knows how this knowledge may  revolutionize our understanding of the universe  

and what we would be able to achieve with it tell  us in the comments do you think could there be a  

sixth a seventh or even possibly more forces  of nature that are yet to be discovered and  

as always thanks for watching Factnomenal  don't forget to like share and subscribe